British government to ban ‘legal high’ mephedrone amid media storm over deaths

UK government will ban ‘legal high’ mephedrone

LONDON — The British government said Monday it will criminalize mephedrone, after the drug known by party revelers as “meow meow” or “MCAT” was linked to several deaths.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said he would ban the drug after receiving advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, a committee of scientists.

Johnson said he would submit legislation Tuesday to outlaw mephedrone as a “class B” drug — a category that also includes marijuana and amphetamines — so that a ban could be in place before national elections, widely expected to be held May 6.

“Parliament permitting, I hope to do this in a matter of weeks,” Johnson said. People caught with “class B” drugs typically face a maximum sentence of five years in jail for possession and 14 years for trafficking.

Johnson said he had banned the import of the mephedrone effective immediately, and instructed border officials to destroy shipments.

The previously little-known drug hit the headlines in British newspapers after two young men died earlier this month after apparently taking mephedrone on a night out.

Les Iversen, head of the advisory council, said 25 deaths in Britain had possible, though unconfirmed, links to the use of mephedrone, which often originates in Chinese labs. A single dose costs about 3 pounds ($4.50), according to public health researchers.

Mephedrone is a synthetic form of cathinone, the active ingredient in khat, a stimulant popular in parts of Africa, said Steven Grant, chief of the clinical neuroscience branch at the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse. He said khat — often chewed or brewed into tea — is chemically and pharmacologically similar to amphetamines and cocaine.

“With mephedrone, you are taking a purified drug in pill form, so unlike tea made out of khat, you’re taking substantially more,” Grant said, adding that it has no known medicinal use.

It is illegal in Britain to sell mephedrone for human consumption, but is often advertised as plant food, bath salts or a “research chemical.” More than 30 Web sites promote the substance, according to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

Other European nations have made mephedrone illegal, including Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands. In the U.S., mephedrone is not illegal, and the low level of usage means it’s not a priority.

Some scientists said they worried British politicians were seeking to override scientific advice in banning the drug, with a member of the drugs advisory council, Polly Taylor, resigning just before a decision was announced. She said it was vital to ensure that “advice is not subjected to a desire to please ministers or the mood of the day’s press.”

Taylor is the latest of several council members to quit amid claims of government interference in drug policy. Last year former chairman David Nutt was forced to step down for speaking out against the government’s decision to toughen the penalties for possessing marijuana, and two of his colleagues quit in solidarity.

Nutt said last week he opposed the criminalizing of mephedrone, saying its effects had not yet been properly studied.

Until recently, mephedrone was an unfamiliar name in the drug lexicon. Many people had never heard of it, and some confused it with methadone, a legal, prescription substitute for heroin, or methamphetamine, a powerful and dangerous drug.

That changed with the deaths this month of Louis Wainwright, 18, and his 19-year-old friend Nicholas Smith.

“I assume that because it’s a legal drug he thought it was safe to take,” Smith’s father, Tony, told the BBC. “I am convinced he took it because it was legal; why would anyone assume it could kill you?”

Johnson also said he would act to close legal loopholes which could allow similar compounds — substances which have the same effect but slightly different chemical composition — to slip through. Last year, the government banned three other “legal highs,” which resulted in more than 200 different compounds being made illegal.

Johnson said he would “enshrine in law a generic definition so that … we can be in the forefront of dealing with this whole family of drugs.”

Ireland is also grappling with the issue. So-called “head shops” have spread across the country over the past year, spurring community pickets and vigilante threats against the businesses. This month, the Irish government passed a law that will outlaw the sale of many current “head shop” products by June. The banned-products list includes several based on mephedrone, including one called Wild Cat.

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London, Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Malin Rising in Stockholm, David Rising in Berlin, Veronika Oleksyn in Vienna, Michael Corder in The Hague, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, and Steve McMorran in Wellington contributed to this story.